Thomson Reuters will streamline technology, close offices and rely more on machines to prepare for a post-pandemic world.
The Toronto-headquartered news and information group said it will spend $500 million to $600 million over two years to burnish its technology credentials, investing in AI and machine learning to get data faster to professional customers increasingly working from home during the coronavirus crisis.
Thomson Reuters will transition from a content provider to a content-driven technology company, and from a holding company to an operational structure.
It aims to cut operating expenses by $600 million through eliminating duplicate functions, modernizing and consolidating technology, as well as through attrition and shrinking its real estate footprint. Layoffs are not a focus of the cost cuts and there are no current plans to divest assets as part of this plan.
“We look at the changing behaviors as a result of COVID … on professionals working from home working remotely being much more reliant on 24-7, digital always-on, sort of real-time always available information, served through software and powered by AI and ML (machine learning),” Chief Executive Steve Hasker said in an interview.
Sales growth is forecast to accelerate in each of the next three years compared with 1.3 percent reported sales growth for 2020.
Thomson Reuters, which owns Reuters News, said revenues rose 2 percent to $1.62 billion, while its operating profit jumped more than 300 percent to $956 million, reflecting the sale of an investment and other items.
The Reuters News business showed lower revenue in the fourth quarter. In January, Stephen J. Adler, Reuters’ editor-in-chief for the past decade, said he would retire in April from the world’s largest international news provider.
